Effects on farmland

Wilding conifers can quickly colonise farmland and significanlty reduce the available grazing land, if seedlings aren’t managed through mob-stocking or other means. Spreading, wilding conifers can also:

limit tourism and recreation-related activities

harbour pests and diseases

fuel devastating wild fires.

Unlike orderly commercial forests, where trees are thinned and there’s good road access, wilding conifer forests can be dense and impenetrable, and the trees can be different species, ages and shapes. All this makes removal difficult, with harvest costs being more than the trees are worth.

Related links

Members of the NZ Wilding Conifer Trust spend millions of dollars each year on wilding control across New Zealand. From 2016, significant extra funding and coordination was brought to this work by the government’s National Wilding Conifer Control Programme. A number of organisations are involved in wilding conifer research, which is co-funded by government and NZ Wilding Conifer Trust members.